She realized, also, that, despite herself, she was disappointed That Person hadn’t called her. He did, sometimes, in the immediate aftermath of dumping her, try to take it all back, try to coax her into forgiveness and reconciliation (emotional, physical). But she’d sensed that this time would be different, that there was something permanent in his intentions in this latest breakup—this feeling at least partly the cause of the tears and then the contract with Dr. Popper on Friday. She couldn’t escape the sneaking suspicion that the next time she saw him would be on the “Vows” page of the Sunday Times, smiling next to Schlampe: blond, C-cup, Ellis–Michaels Schlampe.
Zoey had given her the full Google stalk, of course. She was, clearly, a Very Accomplished Young Woman. But from what Zoey could tell, that was all she was. And there was something so disappointing about that, like he wasn’t even trying—like it turned out his favorite movie was Titanic or something.
She was chewing her thumbnail now, standing, she imagined, only a few feet from where she’d stood when he dumped her. She knew she couldn’t be objective in this matter. And she would be the first to acknowledge she was not the easiest person to be with—that it took a particular kind of person to prefer an ulcer-ravaged, debt-ridden B-girl to a Very Accomplished Young Woman. The thing was—she had always thought Jonah was that sort of person. And if he wasn’t, then who was?
She suddenly pictured her yoga class full of Schlampes: fit, flexible Schlampes in Harvard T-shirts. What was the point again of subjecting herself to that? Wouldn’t her emotional well-being be better served by two slices of pizza and a pint of Häagen-Dazs and spending the next six hours watching Bravo on her couch?
But then, as she had been doing since she started high school at Dalton—still by far the most socially harrowing years of her life—Zoey gave herself a pep talk. Okay, she told herself, Katie Porter looks better than you naked. But she’s a movie star, it’s her job to look better than normal people naked. Plus, some of us have to ingest something other than salad and coke on occasion. As for Evan, it wasn’t fair to either of you to keep dating him even though you thought he was a little boring most of the time and maybe not so smart. And all That Person did in choosing Schlampe was choose an unhappy marriage and an early heart attack. And maybe all the girls in your yoga class will look like the blond version of Olivia Wilde, but it’s more likely they’ll look like those mousy girls in Whole Foods who buy the quinoa salads. So cheer up, and yes, you can go to lululemon on your way to the gym so no one will see you in that NYU T-shirt and Evan’s gym shorts, which is all you have to wear otherwise.
Fifteen minutes later, she was inside the store. She knew objectively that buying yoga clothes was a mistake, given that she had over $22,000 in credit-card debt. But some of the good health associated with yoga seemed to accrue to her just from being among the racks of fitness clothing, drinking the herbal tea she was offered when she came in. She did not correct the salesgirl’s assumption that she did yoga regularly—successfully impersonated someone who understood the distinction between the words “ashtanga” and “bikram.”
She was in admirably good spirits as she came out onto the street with her bag of new clothes. Then her phone rang. She tried to head off expectation by immediately checking to see who it was: Anika, her boss. Oi, thought Zoey. Anika was editor in chief of Glossified, basically a monster: six foot two, chiseled in features, statuesque in body, probably the only woman in the office or maybe the city who had nothing to fear from seeing Katie Porter naked, and who generally smiled only when an intern was crying.
“Hey, Anika,” Zoey said, and forced a cough. “Sorry I had to duck out. I think I might have—”
“What the fuck made you think this fucking picture was fake?” Anika hollered. “Have you fucking seen TMZ?” Oi, oi, oi, thought Zoey. “We had this on a fucking exclusive two hours ago!”
“The neck looked a little weird…?”
“The fucking neck looks fucking fine!”
“Well, y’know, I was also, like, is that the kind of material we want to post?”
“Material that drives traffic? Material that gets us on television? Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Where the fuck have you been working for the last two years? Are you a fucking deputy editor or not? You fucked this up, Zoey, you fucked this up.”
This, Zoey supposed, was what was meant by the “mentoring” she had been promised when she was first hired at Glossified. She knew there was only one way to pacify Anika when she threw one of these tantrums: rip out her pride and stomp on it with her own foot. “I am so sorry,” she said. “You’re one hundred percent right. I completely messed this up.”
“You absolutely fucking did!”
“I know, I can’t believe it, I’m so sorry.”
The conversation continued in this vein for several minutes: Anika swearing at Zoey, Zoey agreeing profusely with everything she said. Finally winding down, Anika said icily, “TMZ ate our lunch today. I hope that bothers you as much as it bothers me.”
It didn’t, but Zoey said, “I promise it won’t happen again.”
“It better fucking not, believe me.” And she hung up.
Immediately Zoey started thinking of all the things she could have said, should have said, in her own defense: If Anika didn’t trust her to make decisions, why had she made her a deputy editor in the first place? Did she really believe Gavin or Isaac or Aliza would do a better job? Had any of them worked until midnight for two straight weeks after three of the staff writers quit because Anika called them fags? And if Anika really thought Zoey was so irredeemably stupid, why didn’t she just fire her? Most days, Zoey fantasized about getting fired. There even was a clause in the contract that read, “Take steps toward finding a more fulfilling career.”
But really, Zoey thought, who was she kidding? She lived paycheck to paycheck. She had $22,000—make that $22,350—in credit-card debt, and another eighteen months on a two-year lease. What was she supposed to do if she got fired? Ask her parents for money? Again? She was over thirty, for Christ’s sake (this not a comforting thought, either).
She glanced around, as if the others on the sidewalk might have been spectators to her ritualistic humiliation. She knew it wasn’t good for her to be in public when these moods came over her: Even in jaunty commercial places like Union Square, the people around her seemed to enlarge, the shadows to darken worryingly. She hailed a cab and went home.
By the time she reached her apartment door, the gloom was full blown. She saw that the mezuzah she’d hung, the one that had belonged to her grandmother, had somehow come loose from one of its nails, and now dangled upside down on her doorjamb. She lifted it halfheartedly—watched it swing back down again. She had been pretty proud of herself for hammering it on. So much for that, too.
She unbolted her door and went inside. As always, her living room was a complete mess: clothes both clean and dirty strewn everywhere, an empty bottle of wine lying on the couch, the coffee table a small landfill of magazines and full ashtrays, her laptop open on the floor, its battery dead. She took out some of her new yoga clothes and changed into them, but it only made her feel ridiculous—as if she had just been trying to fool herself about something.
She was aware—had been made aware by Dr. Popper and by Dr. Popper’s predecessors—of the character of the thoughts she was now giving in to: anxiety-driven, irrationally pessimistic, self-defeating. They could all diagnose it, but none of them could cure it—unless she took psychoactives, which she didn’t want to. She didn’t blame them, however. She knew that Dr. Popper was right when she said that it was up to her: to manage the depressive thoughts, to cope with the inevitable setbacks, to stick to her contract and actualize the life she wanted. But she had been dumped by one guy and broken up with another, going from one-and-a-half boyfriends on Friday morning to being single on Sunday night. She had been bitched out by her boss and seen just how much hotter than her truly hot women were. Wasn’t she entitled to feel like shit for a little while?
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She went into the kitchen, pulled open the refrigerator—was greeted by boxes of leftover deliveries of indeterminate date, half-empty containers of condiments, an empty Brita. She didn’t bother opening the freezer. In a more zealous moment, she had thrown away anything in there worth eating. She looked in the cupboard—found a jar of peanut butter. She opened it up and took out a spoon, scooped herself a dollop. Then she held it before her face, undecided. Couldn’t her life be more than this?
Someone was knocking on her door. Given how her day was going, she figured it would be a home invasion. She went into the living room and looked through the peephole. It wasn’t anyone in a ski mask, but somehow seeing Jonah’s fishbowled image felt about like what she’d expected, too. She pulled open the door. “Before anything, will you fix Nana’s mezuzah?” she said.
He looked puzzled. “Why are you dressed like that? And why are you holding that spoon?”
“I am going to yoga, Arschloch.” She looked at the spoon and the glob of peanut butter. “And I was just making myself…” She trailed off. He looked very strange himself: his tie dangling untied around his neck, his hair mussed, his clothes covered with myriad stains she couldn’t identify. “Did you get … mugged by painters?” she asked.
“No,” he answered sharply. “I’m fine.”
She studied him for another moment, and finally shrugged—walked into the kitchen and dropped the spoon into the sink. She heard him come in and close the door, sit down on the couch. She was feeling extremely horny all of a sudden—maybe this her body’s panicked attempt to avoid going to the gym—and figured she could worry about her emotional well-being after he’d gone down on her. She went back into the living room, and apparently he was thinking the same thing, because he immediately stood up and grabbed her, a little roughly, around the waist. And here they were, she thought, kissing again. After ten years, he still kissed the same way: a bit clumsily, but eagerly, earnestly—like he thought it was important. And maybe there was in fact something special between them—notwithstanding Dr. Popper’s skepticism—because after ten years she still liked kissing him: It still made her happy, in an uncomplicated way—it still turned her on.
She tasted tobacco in his mouth, and this seemed to both feed and transform her nicotine craving. The next thing she knew she had wrapped her legs around him, lifting herself off the floor. “Yoga!” she laughed, and then kissed him some more.
His clothes smelled like cigarettes too—cigarettes and maybe Tabasco sauce—but every sensation, every individual perception of her senses fed her arousal. Eighty percent of the time she didn’t mind sex at all, 10 percent she found it sort of gross, and 10 percent it drove her to wild abandon and lachrymose orgasms. Happily, she could tell this was definitely going to be a top 10 percent moment. He threw her down on the couch, yanked off her top and sports bra, yanked down her stretch pants.
“Sylvia and I are moving in together,” he said as he moved on top of her. “Do you know how wrong this is?” he said, pushing his fingers inside her. “This is so, so wrong.”
It was a little strange as far as dirty talk went, but she was too busy having a tiny orgasm to care. “Tell me I’m hotter than Katie Porter,” she said as he began biting her nipples. “Tell me I’m so much hotter than Schlampe.”
“You’re so much hotter than her,” he said, taking off his jacket and shirt as she undid his pants. “I’m going to live with her, and I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to marry her, and I’m going to keep on fucking you.”
This pushed the limits a little too far. “Maybe let’s stop talking now.” He pulled his pants and boxers off his ankles and lay back down on top of her—and, feeling the pressure of his naked body against her, she was ready to forgive any strangeness of conversation. “Fuck me, Yonsi,” she whispered in his ear. She cursed in English only in these moments—only in these moments did it come naturally to her. She squeezed her eyes closed, waited.
“It’s so wrong,” he said, his lips beside her ear.
“Yup, right, got it.”
She waited a few more moments—but the essential sensation was not being felt. She opened her eyes to see him looking down in a troubled way at her naked body. She reached down to his dick. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” She pushed him away with her leg. She considered masturbating, but could there be a more pathetic end to this day? She sat up and hunched forward. He had started to cry into his hands, but she felt an extreme lack of sympathy. They sat like that, naked, side by side, for several minutes. At one point his phone started to ring—he took it out of his pocket without looking at it and tossed it onto the coffee table. Someone named Brett was calling him; she watched the phone vibrate its way across the glass. “Okay, I know this is stupid,” she finally said, “but it’s not because I’m not shaved, right?” That only made him cry harder. She went back into the kitchen, retrieved her spoon, and ate some peanut butter. Then she went into the bathroom and put on her bathrobe, went back into the living room. He had his pants and shirt on, was smoking a cigarette.
“Don’t do that in here, okay?” she said. He looked at her a little skeptically, but when she didn’t smile he put it out in one of the four ashtrays on the coffee table. As if to further make her point, she picked his jacket up off the floor, folded it sharply, and slung it over the back of the couch. “This suit sucks, by the way,” she told him. He didn’t answer, just stared vacantly ahead, and there hadn’t been any satisfaction in insulting him. There wasn’t going to be any satisfaction of any kind today, she could tell by now.
“What are you doing here, Yonsi?” she asked him, feeling like crying herself. “I mean, seriously, what are you doing here?”
“We’re all naked, Zoey,” he answered. “The body is clothed, but…”
It suddenly struck her how strange it all was—the state of his clothing, his generally harried appearance, that he’d shown up unannounced outside her door.
“Nothing happened, did it?” she asked anxiously. She sat down next to him on the couch, put her hand on his knee. “You’re okay, right? Nobody died or anything?”
“I wanted to prove what an asshole I am.”
“Who said they still needed proof?” She’d said it as a joke—a fairly witty one, in her estimation—but the look on his face was so defeated that she immediately regretted it. “You’re not an asshole, Yonsi.”
“I just … I just wanted to prove that nothing had changed. Y’know?”
At this she pulled her robe a little more closed over her chest. “Don’t worry, Yonsi,” she said. “Nothing’s changed.”
His phone was ringing again—this time Schlampe was calling him. When it had stopped, he asked, “Do you still keep those tools under your sink?” She nodded, her eyes on the pile of crap on her coffee table. She heard him get up and shuffle around in the kitchen; she heard him go into the hall and nail the mezuzah back into place.
When he came inside, he said, “I’m really sorry. I won’t bother you anymore.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that.”
“You are hotter than Schlampe,” he said to her. “And Katie Porter. It has nothing to do with being shaved, or whatever.”
He seemed about to go, so she said, “Are those really going to be the last words?”
They looked at each other—as though across an ocean of memory and missed opportunity and regret and—Dr. Popper’s skepticism notwithstanding, emotional well-being notwithstanding—love, she thought.
After a pause, he said, “Maybe in the beginning. Maybe that September,” he went on, “I sometimes think if it hadn’t been for—”
This brought on the tears—and she sobbed with all the force of the orgasms she hadn’t had. He remained in the doorway until the tears had been exhausted. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” And then he left.
She felt she could have successfully argued with any lung surgeon, public-health advocate, or cancer survivor in the world her case for ha
ving a cigarette right now. And for that reason she cleaned her apartment up a little bit and then put her yoga clothes back on. She figured she would never see him again. Then Zoey went to the gym.
8. JUDITH AGONISTES
Judith did not, as was universally recommended to her, take any time off from college. What exactly, she wondered, did people think she would do with time off? Her entire life, she had been prepared—absurdly, she saw now—to do only one thing: go to college. Just because she’d recognized the fallacy—the naïveté—of all this preparation didn’t mean she knew how to do anything else.
But the attorney handling her parents’ estate made it clear that she was the only one “empowered” to make the important decisions—and so Judith spent several weeks after the funeral in her hometown, if only so she would never have to return there again. She stayed at an anonymous Holiday Inn twenty minutes down the highway: She didn’t want to be recognized where she stayed, she didn’t want to sleep in her childhood bed—and the thought of sleeping in her parents’ bed struck her as monstrous.
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